"Bad" Acoustics?

A few years ago, I mixed an album release concert event for an excellent artist. It was held in a very traditional style church building -a gorgeous piece of architecture with an amazing vibe. But the album genre was modern worship with close-miked drums, guitars, vocals, and so on. The old space was obviously designed for choral and organ music, featuring a long and lush reverberation. Modern worship is done in this space periodically, with a low Q portable PA system and the sound has been reportedly poor. No surprise there. Much was done to add concert lighting and various stage elements to create a modern feel. The space was transformed and visually stunning. But acoustically, I knew it was a freight train headed right at me. At least I saw it coming…

For this event, we took in a PA with good pattern control and a very tight vertical dispersion, and carefully aligned it for the best possible direct-to-reverberant ratio over the audience area (excluding the balcony, which we intentionally closed). We couldn’t change the room, but we did focus the direct sound on the audience only –not the room. Even doing everything possible to extend the apparent critical distance, improve intelligibility, and deliver a great band sound, it was still highly reverberant. Just walking across the wooden floors in the 1,000-seat space had a distinct empty roar. At sound check, each crack of the snare drum seemed to resonate a hundred times off every surface...I love a challenge, but this was extreme. the only up side is that the extreme natural reverberation was balanced, and not a muddy “gym roar”.

Through much tweaking of balance and processing we made the absolute most of the situation. I “mixed around the room”. We located the guitar amps off stage to keep noise down. It went quite well in spite of the acoustical environment and listeners were able to engage with the music. Comments were that it was the best sounding modern music event in the space, by far. That was due to great pattern control and extreme attention to detail. It definitely wasn’t easy. But it was a success.

But I did get weary of hearing the phrase "bad acoustics" used to describe the space.

During setup, we had to pause while the church organist practiced for an upcoming event. What a huge sound! The organ sang in that room in a stunning way and I listened in amazement. Acoustically, this old room was clearly designed right for its original purpose. The long natural reverb was well balanced, dense, and beautifully smooth. But, the >5sec RT60 (reverberation) time didn't suit our purposes, at all! But does that make it a bad space? NOPE. To say such a space has "bad acoustics" is a mistake in my opinion and a disservice to the original designer. It would be accurate to say a space has an acoustic signature that isn’t suited for a particular style of programming (loud, close-miked modern band, in our case). It works both ways: attempting to do choral and organ music with heavy congregational singing would be lacking and maybe lifeless in a 1-second room. But such a room can work for modern musical styles.

So, next time you hear someone say a venue has "bad acoustics", ask them "bad for what?" It might be just perfect for another application.